Category Archives: qualifications

Sycophantic Republicans who are salivating over having a Pentecostal, anti-choice, non-feminist woman on their national ticket are parroting the party’s talking points about Sarah Palin without regard to rationale or reason. Hell, they aren’t even thinking faster than their mouths are echoing the McCain campaign’s sputum on the issue of Palin’s level of experience as it applies to being one heart beat away from the presidency should McCain be elected.

The McCain campaign and their minions in the press are extolling Sarah Palin’s experience as though it were a positive. Being a small town mayor gave her more executive experience than either Obama or Biden have, their line of reasoning would have us believe. Her twenty months as governor of a state of barely more than 600,000 trumps any executive experience, again, that the Democratic ticket has between them, so the McCain parrots all chirp.

When then does being a governor or mayor fABSOLUTELY disqualify your credentials on national security? When you are John McCain and you are trying to defeat primary opponents Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani.

In October 2007, when McCain’s candidacy seemed doomed, the Senator berated the two Republican front runners for lacking the necessary political experience to handle the responsibilities of commander in chief.

McCain said then, “I have had a strong and a long relationship on national security, I’ve been involved in every national crisis that this nation has faced since Beirut, I understand the issues, I understand and appreciate the enormity of the challenge we face from radical Islamic extremism.” The Senator then declared. “I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training. I wasn’t a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn’t a governor for a short period of time.”

Had he even heard Sarah Palin’s name then? Does he ever remember what he says in one time and place as opposed to another time and place? If Giuliani’s eight years as mayor a city of 8 million doesn’t overshadow Palin’s six years as mayor of Wasilla and it’s 6,000 residents, then I think McCain needs to clarify the difference to the American people.

If Mitt Romney’s years as governor of a state of millions doesn’t qualify him for the Presidency or the Vice Presidency, then how is Sarah Palin exempt from the same criticism?

John McCain needs to square this with the American people so that we can see the logic behind his choice of someone eminently less qualified as a mayor than Rudy Giuliani who he disparaged as lacking in experience, and someone with a fraction of the experience of Mitt Romney as a state executive who McCain characterized as “a governor for a short period of time.”

Unless, of course, John McCain is merely a political opportunist whose only qualification for the presidency is his own ambition and his willingness to say one thing one time and the opposite thing another time and never stand up and define the truth of the matter.